Through times of great sorrow, music, literature and other pursuits become indispensable
companions for many people.

So, as the nation faces the horror that befell Newtown, Conn., critics at
The Washington Post took a moment to consider the role of the arts in confronting
grief.

They refer to works that have resonated with them in such times:

Sarah Kaufman

dance critic

A tightknit community in mourning over the loss of its children represents the subject of the
transcendent balletic masterpiece
Dark Elegies, unveiled in 1937 by Antony Tudor and accompanied by the Mahler work
Kindertotenlieder (Songs on the Death of Children).

No better offering takes people into the depths and out of them.

Rage, bone-deep agony and a struggle to survive erupt in brief, pungent bursts before Tudor
turns to a reason to go on: simply to fill out the circle and reside among the living.

Anne Midgette

chief classical-music critic

In times of tragedy, classical music comes into its own — with Barber’s
Adagio for Strings or Brahms’
Requiem as widespread cultural signifiers of mourning. I think back, from the days after
9/11, on the ache of the soprano solo in the Brahms work — soaring and innocently singing of future
comfort.

Yet music for private mourning is a highly individual thing: Some turn to thundering apocalyptic
statements; some want quiet, radiant innocence.

I might put on Schubert’s
Mass in E-flat, which has elements of both — melded with sheer beauty.

Peter Marks

theater critic

The theater’s wisest human, Shakespeare, is my go-to source of consolation — and
The Winter’s Tale is what I’m often drawn to.

It’s just about the most beautiful play ever written about reconciliation and forgiveness.

A father’s blind self-regard leads to the death of his grieving wife — a fatal weakness
magically redeemed after he learns tolerance and magnanimity.

Chris Richards

pop-music critic

When tragedies transcend words, I often turn to a piece of music that uses only three.The
titular refrain of John Coltrane’s
A Love Supreme is a mantra in service of the highest and most healing of human
emotions.

Through the grim weekend, I also found myself reflexively cuing up records by the Clash, Public
Enemy and Fugazi — loud, defiant albums conceived by protest artists who weren’t interested in
starting conversation so much as demanding it.

It’s time for our country to demand a conversation about gun control.

Philip Kennicott

art and architecture critic

Seeking consolation during a tragedy that hasn’t directly affected you is histrionic, like a bad
form of sentimentality, and distracting from urgent and obvious feelings of anger and political
determination.

Rather than seek solace, we should work to change society in ways that help prevent such
mayhem.

Still, if one needs a form of distraction, then anything that is dense and polyphonic reminds us
that we can fashion the world in new and better ways, that we aren’t powerless and at the mercy of
a flawed society.

Bach’s
Mass in B Minor, perhaps.

Ann Hornaday

chief film critic

For families in search of the cinema of reassurance, it’s tempting to find your softest blanket
and head straight for Pixar.

Or, for grown-ups, the transcendent humanism of a drama such as
You Can Count on Me or
Of Gods and Men.

This particular moment, however, inspires not just grief but outrage.

Finding Nemo, then
Bowling for Columbine — take comfort, but take action, too.

Ron Charles

book critic

We usually think of Walt Whitman as the great champion of himself, but he also wrote our nation’s
most moving elegy.

When Lilacs Last in the Dooryard Bloom’d was composed during the horrible shock that
followed the assassination of President Abraham Lincoln.

Slow and lovely, and steeped in sorrow, the lines still give shape to a whole nation’s
unspeakable grief and offer the promise of solace, eventually.